SUKHĀVATĪ AND THE LIGHT-WORLD: PURE LAND ELEMENTS IN THE CHINESE MANICHAEAN EULOGY OF THE LIGHT-WORLD

Gunner Mikkelsen Sydney

Pure Land devotionalism was the most popular and widespread form of Mahāyāna in medieval China. The image of Amitābha and his Pure Land or Western Paradise, known in as Sukhāvatī, “Land of Bliss”, with all its splendour and magnificence, captured the imagination of countless Chinese who aspired to be reborn there and thus attain complete enlightenment and . The popular- ity of Amitābha in the Tang period is seen in mural paintings of the Mogao caves at Dunhuang,1 and it is attested in the change of thematic emphases in the sculptural art of the Longmen caves near Luoyang. An investigation by Tsukamoto Zenryū of dated inscriptions of statues in the Longmen caves has shown that the number of carved images of Amitābha and his attendant 觀音 (Avalokiteśvara) here increased from 30 between 500 and 540 CE to 147 between 650 and 690, whereas the number of images of Śākyamuni and in the same period decreased from 78 to 19.2 This significant rise in the number of Amitābha images in coincided with and may be seen partly as an outcome of the proselytizing activities of Shandao 善道, the third of the great Pure Land masters, who effectively and successfully spread the teachings of the Pure Land school in the capital Chang’an from the 640’s to his death in 681. Shandao’s achievements are well documented. He wrote several works, produced and distributed thousands of copies of the Amita Sūtra, and painted more than three hundred pictures of Sukhāvatī.3 According to the 11th-century Xinxiu wangsheng zhuan 新修往生傳, “the monks and laymen who submitted to

1 Cf. Shi 2002. 2 Tsukamoto 1942, 371–80. See also Seah 1975, 173–82, Pas 1987, 78, and Pas 1995, 68. 3 For Shandao’s artistic work, see the comments in Pas 1987, 77–78 and Chappell 1996, 160–61. 202 gunner mikkelsen him in their minds were as numerous as those going to market.” Some of these followers were affected by his teachings to such a degree that they committed suicide by “throwing themselves from a high mountain range,” “jumping into a deep well,” or “setting themselves on fire,” in order to hasten their entry into the Pure Land.4 The growth of the Pure Land movement in the seventh and eighth centuries was consid- erable, and in the second half of the eighth, following the An Lushan rebellion, its practices were introduced at the court. More than one fifth of all Mahāyāna sūtras of Indian origin in the mention Amitābha and his Pure Land.5 Particularly important to the Pure Land school were the Larger and Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtras (Sūtras on the Land of Bliss), which are believed to have been composed in Northwest India in Gāndhārī or a related Northwestern Prākrit language around 100 CE. Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of both texts are extant, and fragments in Old Turkish and Khotanese from the Turfan region and Dunhuang testify to the popu- larity of Amitābha and Sukhāvatī at Buddhist centres in Central Asia.6 From the third (or possibly second) century to the tenth, several Chinese translations of the Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtras were produced. Twelve transla- tions of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra are recorded in Chinese Buddhist catalogues; of these five are extant. The most influential translation, entitled Foshuo Wuliangshou jing 佛說無量壽經 (Sūtra on the Buddha of Infinite Life preached by the Buddha), is attributed to Kang Sengkai 康僧鎧 (Samghavarman, ca. 252 CE) but may – as surmised by Fujita Kōtatsu – have been produced by Buddhabhadra and Baoyun 寶雲 around 421.7 The most influential translation of the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūhasūtra, entitled Foshuo Amituo jing 佛說阿彌陀經 (Amita Sūtra preached by the Buddha), was made by Kumārajīva in 402 or shortly after; the Smaller

4 Pas 1987, 69–70; Pas 1995, 91. 5 Yabuki 1937, 450–74; Fujita 1973, 141–61. 6 For recent English translations of the Sanskrit texts, see Gómez 1996, 61–122. For editions and translations of Central Asian versions, see Zieme 1985, 129–49 (seven fragments of L.Sukh. and one of S.Sukh. in Old Turkish from Sängim); Hamilton 1986, I, 26–29 and II, 271–72 (fragment of L.Sukh. in Old Turkish from Dunhuang); Kudara/ Zieme 1997, 73–82 (two fragments of L.Sukh. in Old Turkish from Yarkhoto); Kudara/ Zieme 1985 (fragments of the Contemplation Sūtra in Old Turkish from the Turfan region); Elverskog 1997, 50–51, 63–65; Gómez 2004, 62–68 (S.Sukh. in Tibetan); Skjærvø 2002, 176 (fragment of L.Sukh. in Khotanese from Khadaliq). 7 Fujita 1996, 7. The text is edited in T. XII (360), 265c–79a, and translated in Inagaki 1995, 227–313 and Gómez 1996, 153–222.